Thursday, 11 June 2015

Don't Be A Clown: Juggling Blogging and A Full Time Job | Lifestyle

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So as you can see from my last publish date I have been
neglecting my little hub on the Internet for a little while now and haven’t
posted in what seems like AGES! Truthfully this was down to two reasons.

Firstly, I know I haven’t been blogging for long now (I started earlier this
year) but I already found myself in a bit of a rut. I had a bit of a battle
with myself about what direction I wanted to take my blog in. Have you ever had
that? So instead of just posting for the sake of posting I thought a little
break would do me good and ignite my passion for blogging again. And it has!

Secondly, I have been SO busy. Things at work have become a
little hectic so gone are the days where I can find a cheeky little gap in my
work day to find time to draft a blogpost and check out other bloggers. My
hectic work day (you can find out more about what i do here) has made me feel so lazy and tired so by the time I get home all
I want to do is eat, shower, wack on my PJs and watch Big Brother (#dontjudgeme). This leaves no time for blogging!

So now the light has been re-sparked and I’m getting back in
my swing I thought I’d share some of my tips (which I'm going to be using
myself) to juggle a full time job and blogging.

1.Time Management

Yeap, the cliché piece of advice.
I know you've heard this a million times but I cannot stress how important it
is to manage your time and prioritise your time. Why not set a mini schedule
for yourself? Plan for the days you want to write posts and days to take your
photos/visuals. This way you won’t feel overwhelmed after a long day at work.
Also, make use of your weekends. I used to be so bad at this. My Saturdays are
usually booked as my “social” days so I don’t usually have time for writing, so
I need to start using my Sundays more proactively – even if that means spending
my Sunday morning taking visuals and photos for the follow week’s posts.

Time is your biggest commodity.
Make sure you use it wisely!

2.Planner

Get organised. The way you do
this is entirely up to you but make sure you do it. Some people prefer making
use of the technology around us and setting up a mobile schedule or reminders
to get certain things done, whilst others prefer the good old notebook and pen
method. Personally, iphone reminders never work well for me. For some reason my
phone doesn't register them as real and pressing the dismiss button has become
the procrastinator-in-me’s dream! The method I like to plan my blog posts is a mixture between jotting down post
ideas in a notebook and using a blog planner template. I’ve used a few
templates in the past and I am a huge fan.

So
much so that I’m actually designing my dream template at the moment. Once it’s
complete I’d be more than happy to share it with you guys, so let me know if
you’re interested.Planner templates are great because the headings and
sections ensure you haven’t forgotten anything and allow you to make sure all the
aspects from writing the post to promotion are covered.

3.Notes

Have you ever been minding your
own business throughout the day and get a burst of creativity and an amazing
blog post idea pops out of nowhere? You are adamant this is going to be great,
but a few hours (/days) letter you sit down to write and its gone. You have
lost all track of what your brilliant idea was and you are now staring into
your computer bashing your head hoping it resurfaces? The easiest and simplest
way to avoid this is to just make notes throughout the day. Again, either carry
a small notepad in your bag for ideas or utilise the notes application on your
phone. This not only keeps track of your thoughts, it also speeds up your
writing process.

4.

Preparation

So now you know what you’re going
to write. You have great post ideas. You know your rough time frame of when you
want to get this content out there so now do the prep to make sure it’s out
there in time. For me the longest and most time consuming part of any blog post
are the visuals. They seem to take me ages to master. I have no photography
knowledge and I don’t own one of them “#YouKnowI’mABloggerBecauseIHaveOne”
Cannon cameras (I use my iphone), so getting the lighting and angles right just
take up so much time. You can’t even imagine how many draft posts I have
backlogged on my account but I just haven’t posted them because I cant find
time to take the visuals. But now I’ve found a solution, I set aside a specific
time to take photos (like mentioned above, it’s Sunday mornings) which leaves
me time during the week to perfect my content and get it out to the world.

5.Schedule posts

I use blogger to upload my blog
posts so it’s ability to schedule a post is a godsend to me! I’m pretty sure Wordpress
has a similar application so use it! Sites like hootsuite and futuretweets also
are great at helping you schedule your social media posts too, so if you spend
a few hours a week scheduling your blog and social media posts you can spend
more time making content (or watching big brother?) Scheduling posts is a great
way to make sure your posts are being published at a regular rate and takes the
headache away from having to rush home in time to grab that optimised
publishing time. Talking of choosing your publish time, things like that
actually matter! When scheduling a post, do a little research about when your
target audience are most likely to be active online. The easiest way to do this
to think about when you are online yourself. For me it’s often in the morning
before work, during my lunch break and right before bed. (And sometimes during
work but don’t tell my manager that).

So there you have it, the blogger laws im planning on following myself! Hope you found this useful. I'd love to hear more about some of your tips and how you manage full time work and blogging! Please hit me up on twitter or leave a comment below.